Nebbins had even changed her name. She had been called Flossie, a contraction from Florence. He had disapproved and invented Doré, and she had accepted enthusiastically. She had a strange intuition that what he did would result for her good, and obeyed implicitly--yes, with even an uneducated admiration. They had become engaged. She would have married him, but he was too much in love not to be proud. He wanted three thousand in the bank, and so they had waited. Through his offices, she had begun as a super in the local stock company, advancing to an occasional speaking part. She had been at home at once on the stage; she felt born for this. The next season she had entered another stock company playing a circuit, as a regular member. She had wept desperately on leaving Nebbins, completely under his ascendency. She had even offered at the last moment to throw up everything and marry him. He had refused honestly. She had not seen him since. This memory tortured her. She had soon progressed to where she had seen him in true perspective, or rather in his ridiculous lights. She quickly grew ashamed of the romance. It was something she would have blotted from her life, the more so because at the bottom she felt an obligation, and it revolted her to think that what she was become had, at a critical moment, depended on a Yankee press-agent named Josh Nebbins, who wore ridiculous patent leather shoes with chamois tops! She was ashamed, and at the same time she was afraid--afraid lest at some time this persistent man, to whom her word had once indiscreetly been given, should surge up out of the past and claim her! He had been the only man from whom she had ever directly accepted money. It had not been much,--a hundred dollars given as a reserve; they were engaged to be married; he had silenced her objections,--but still the fact remained. She had a thousand times resolved to pay it back--to rid herself of this fetter of the past. She had never done so. This was her greatest reproach. From Nebbins on, the way had not been difficult. She had never saved much money, nor continued long in one opportunity; but she had learned confidence, and how easy opportunities rise for a pretty girl with audacity and wit. But always, in her progress from city to capital, from capital to metropolis, she felt a shadowy crowd of men, reproachful and embittered. She had never been affected by the pangs she had awakened, nor paused to think that there could be any wrong in using whatever presented itself to her--never before. But to-night, alone, facing her first defeat, revolted and stricken, she felt guilty--horribly guilty; and as her faith was simple, and God had always appeared to her as a good friend, she sought His reasons in her past, and said to herself: "Yes; that is why it has come--that is why I am punished! Oh, I must be very wicked!"